1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method to authenticate products, and more particularly, to a system and method capable of authenticating products from a manufacturer through the chain of commerce up to, including, and beyond a point-of-sale and to maintain a database of the ownership of the products.
2. Description of the Related Art
Counterfeiting branded goods is almost a $1 trillion dollar enterprise annually. The plague of counterfeit goods sold in commerce decreases revenue for the manufacturer of the copied good, or for the athlete or celebrity endorsers of the products sold, etc. The availability of counterfeit products decreases the market value for authentic items since the authenticity of the products is uncertain. Uncertainty about high value products drives down after-market value and limits the resale avenues available to collectors who wish to sell such goods.
The emergence of the Internet as a marketplace has only increased the amount of counterfeit products sold in commerce, and recent court rulings have held Internet sites not responsible for the sale of counterfeit goods. Accordingly, there is a need to provide effective methods to combat counterfeiting, assure buyers that the items they purchased are genuine, and provide assurance to subsequent purchasers that items resold are genuine.
Current solutions to combat counterfeit goods include invisible ink markers, embedded RFID chips, holograms, serial numbers, and certificates of authenticity. However, these approaches all have disadvantages. For example, many of these methods require a unique system of identifying products sold that are themselves eventually counterfeited, and these are not capable of providing independent point-of-sale authentication of products as they are sold.